(2007) 3 Michael Buening Guy Pearce's taut, bony features and intense interior mien make the actor a natural lead in suspense thrillers. In First Snow he delivers a gripping performance of uptight muscularity in an engrossingly well-plotted if occasionally wobbly suspense drama redolent of a good bitterly ironic Stephen King short story. Pearce plays Jimmy Starks, a slick but vacant Albuquerque flooring salesman. With his preening confidence, long hair, dirty dress shirts, and sketchy dream to "make it" by unloading a stash of vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes, Jimmy resides within a familiar realm of attractive B-movie lowlifes. When his car breaks down near a desert outpost, he fills the time by visiting a fortune teller (J.K. Simmons) operating out of a mobile home. The teller makes a couple of innocuous predictions and then undergoes a kind of seizure and abruptly ends the session. After resuming his normal life, Jimmy starts seeing grim portents in everyday occurrences and the paranoia chips at his cool facade. In desperation, he returns to the teller, who informs him that he sees no future for Starks past the first snowfall. For the remainder of the picture, Jimmy tries to figure out how he'll die and how to stop it, which eventually leads him to a dark secret in his past. Director Mark Fergus keeps enough threads running -- dishing out clues, drawing the audience -- to make for an enticing, if modest, thriller. He's particularly skillful at using close-up cutaways, obstructed views, and minimal sound design to give a sense of menace to every stray shoe, topless bar sign, and distant car shudder. Pearce similarly starts out broad and charismatic, commanding and pulling the audience into his character's story while gradually revealing the psychology within. He's supported by a fine collection of character actors, including Simmons and William Fichtner as Jimmy's equally smarmy but warm-hearted co-worker. (However, the girlfriend part, played by Piper Perabo, is horribly underwritten.) Such carefully plotted teasers tend to break down when the final reveal can't surpass the potential horrors brewing in the audience's imagination. And toward the end the film unravels a bit as the outcome becomes predictable. As a cautionary tale against tempting fate, it may be a bit hackneyed, but as a nail-biting depiction of one man fighting violent paranoia, First Snow is pleasantly small-scaled and self-contained.

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First Snow (2007)

First Snow

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Mild Violence
Adult Situations
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genres

Thriller

sub-genres

Psychological Thriller

category

Feature

directed by

Mark Fergus

countries

USA

release date

March 23, 2007 (USA)

run time

102 min.

produced by

El Camino Films, Kustom Entertainment, Furst Films, Yari Film Group

released by

First Snow Distribution, Yari Film Group

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First Snow

First Snow

First Snow

First Snow

by Mark Deming synopsis

A man desperately tries to keep a strange prediction from coming true in this independent psychological thriller. Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce) is a traveling salesmen who is in New Mexico on business when he crosses paths with a psychic. The psychic offers to read Jimmy's fortune, and quickly informs him that he will die before the first snow of the winter. Jimmy's girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), doesn't think much of this prediction, but with the winter months on the horizon, this notion makes Jimmy a bit nervous. Jimmy's anxieties grow as the weather suddenly conspires against him and his fate begins taking a number of turns for the worst. Can Jimmy somehow escape his fate, or has he been doomed by the fortune teller's words? The first feature film from director Mark Fergus, First Snow received its North American premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

characteristics

- Psychic

- Snow

- Spellbinders

- Winter

- Prediction

- Fate

- Dead

- Death

- Dying

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